How Poetry Serves Civic Life
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. This morning, we'll be joined by three California Poet Laureates. Fresno's Joseph Rios, El Cerrito's Tess Taylor, and San Francisco's former Poet Laureate, Tongo Eisen Martin. Each of them received a $50,000 award from the Academy of American Poetry to fund literary projects in their cities. They'll read us some poems of place, and we'll talk about how they're putting the money to work finding the next generation of poets.

We talk about the role of poetry in communities and how the art form serves civic life. It's all coming up next, right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.

The relationship between place and poetry is complex, but for some poets, it's everything. I was just reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti's The Great American Waterfront Poem, a poem of and about the San Francisco docks, or maybe think of Ada Limon's Sonoma or Wanda Coleman's Los Angeles. Our poets today are poets of place in that sense, reckoning with local hauntings and traditions and infrastructures.

But they're engaged on a civic level, too, going out in the community. And we're going to hear about both sides of this work, some of it enabled by awards from the Academy of American Poetry. We're joined by Joseph Rios, Fresno Poet Laureate. Welcome. We're also joined by Tess Taylor, El Cerrito Poet Laureate. Welcome, Tess. Hey. And we've got Tongo Eisen-Martin, former San Francisco Poet Laureate. Welcome, Tongo. Hey, hey.

So I think we should probably start off with a poem. I think that makes sense. Tess, how about you? Do you want to start off giving us a poem about El Cerrito? And I'll let you intro it a little bit with the sense that you grew up there. This is your hometown. It is my hometown. And what's so cool about going back to build poetry programming in the schools that I grew up in is just this sense of coming back with love and paying it forward. Yeah.

But as you'll see in this poem, I didn't always feel so in love with El Cerrito. Do you run into little Tess's when you're in the classroom? I do. I see them all the time. I see also like the light on the bungalows after school. I feel like I should be playing tetherball. You know, like I should run out there. You should. They'd probably like a poet playing tetherball. You know what? I think we should all write a tetherball poem. This one's called Song for El Cerrito.

I used to hate its working-class bungalows, grid planning, power lines sawing hillsides. It ashamed me the way my parents did for not making more money. Now it looks like a Diebenkorn. Now I want even the bad wood siding in our living room and my mother's aging books on modern Indian thought. Her tanpura in the sunlight.

I want foxweed in railroad trestles, endangered frogs in our gully. I want a lemon tree. On San Pablo, polyester collectibles, the Mr. Bling jewelers, the all-button emporium open 10 to 4 only Saturdays. How did Love Lodge in these...

merry gold light forgives even traffic islands december only yellows ginkgos and reddens maples a stream smells rich under our house for christmas my sister and i steal persimmons from neighbors yards

Ten years on, I discover how I keep falling in love here among pickups and blackberry brambles. Tonight, it happened again. We drove a bad car to the beach. At dusk, a lone scrub pine, clear like a Japanese print. In the real sky, the moon slid through clouds that were cinder-colored.

That was Taylor reading her poetry collection. Which one do you have there in your hand? This one's called The Forage House. The Forage House, yeah. Do you think that writing poems about El Cerrito helped you see it in a new way such that you could love it despite your initial feelings as a child?

Well, it's funny because this book is actually my first book. And when I wrote this poem, I think I was still living in New York. And it was like the poem started to tell me that I was coming home. And you know what? I still love having a lemon tree. Yeah. Who doesn't, though, really? It just feels like one of the pleasures of California. Yeah.

Joseph Rios, you're from Fresno too, right? That is your hometown? That is my hometown, yeah. And family's been there since the Mexican Revolution. Oh, dang. So like real deep roots. You've got like great, great grandparents buried there. Yeah, they've all been there since like 1912 or so as far as we know. And like what do you want people to know about the Fresno that you're from before you read the poem?

It's just, it is a land of poets. It's a land of, you know, immigrants. And, you know, there's lots of working people, farm workers. You know, when I say Fresno, I'm often thinking of everything between Modesto and Bakersfield, like those...

400 miles north and south of farmland, you know, like it's all... The greater Fresno. You know, yeah, the greater Fresno area. But Metro Fresno is a... It's just... It's a great place to grow up. You know, I mean, it gets, you know, people make fun of it everywhere else in California and especially people

People from L.A. and the Bay often. Sorry, no offense here. But when they're flying up and down through the five, they kind of overlook what's really going on in that part of the state. But yeah, there's lots of poets from there. If you're a poetry fan, you probably know many of them already, like Phil Levine or Larry Levis or...

Anthony Cody or Maidervang, some of these really special and exciting poets that come from there and their work comes from there. I also think people underestimate how beautiful Fresno is. I mean, like really truly though, like the trees of Fresno are so gorgeous there. It's much more leafy and green than I imagined it would be if all you're looking at is, you know, the industrial agricultural landscape surrounding it, you know. Yeah. All right, let's hear your poem. Let's hear your poem.

Okay, so this poem is just simply titled Fresno Is. Fresno is a leaky El Camino with rust in the bed that doesn't need much to get running. It's growing roots as we speak in a cracked oil-spotted driveway and its sprouted long-spined arms of bougainvillea. And the fuel door is bustling with clover,

When the blooms pop in that near neon pink, that's when the engine will turn over and it can cruise real slow. Down King Cesar Chavez Boulevard, I can hear it now. Somebody's steel blasting from his custom three-wheel bike. He throws up his shades and whistles as his plant-based bio-fueled vanfla turns heads all down the road, leaf limbs scraping as it leans into a three-wheel U-turn.

Fresno is a holy well under a mini mall, a McKinley and First that becomes the magical pho sold at each of the five restaurants there. Fresno is the man digging at the bottom of the well, filling another bucket with dirt, wondering if the next swing of the pick will splash mud in his face. The mud is a dream. Fresno is a dream, whispered about from Saigon to Ayokesco, and it's hidden under several packed feet of hardpan.

Fresno's the hard pan. Fresno's the water, the man, the shovel, the hole, the bucket, the darkness, the light. Fresno is an abuela living off social security who bails you out after your third DUI. Fresno used to dance on the west side, at the Palomar, at the Rainbow, drank too much and punched her sister-in-law at the VFW, then died with an unpaid credit card from Montgomery Ward.

Every felled fruit tree is Fresno's abuela, being cremated in a sacred funeral pyre. A memory rendered into ash, its namesake, Fresno, un Fresno. Fresno is the elder fig trees that bow their heads into the furrowed soil when they're piled, burned, and replaced with almonds. Fresno is whitewashed trunks. It's the fire, the smoke. It's so thick it blurs the mountains and paints new shades of red into the horizon.

Mokos stream endlessly from our noses like tears as we cry real tears, waving goodbye from a passing Amtrak train full of recently released cholos with their grandma's names tattooed on their faces.

That was Joseph Rios reading his poem Fresno Is. That was Tess Taylor cheering here in the studio. We're talking about the role of poetry in civic life and in just community life. We're joined by Joseph Rios from Fresno, Tess Taylor, El Cerrito, and Tongo Eisenmartin.

San Francisco. We want to hear from you too. You know, maybe share a poem you love about the place you live. Write a couple lines for us about your home or community. Forum at kqed.org. You can give us a call 866-733-6786. Tongo, let's hear about your San Francisco. Do you want to start off just straight up with your poem? Hopefully you find comfort downtown.

But if not, we brought you enough cigarette filters to make a decent winter coat. A special species of handshake lets all know who's king. And what's the lifespan of uniformed cloth? This coffin needs to quit acting like those are birds singing.

Rusty nails have no wings, have no voice other than that of a white world dine. They're book pages in the gas pump. Catchy, isn't it? The way three nooses is the rule, or the way potato sack masks go so well with radio codes, or the way condemned Africans fought their way back to the ocean only to find waves made of 1920s burnt-up piano parts, European backdoor deals, and red flowers for widows who spend all day in the sun mumbling in San Francisco. Red flowers, but what's the color of a doctor visit? There are book titles in the streets. Book titles like...

Hero, you'd make a better zero. Or hey, fur coat lady, the president is dead. Or pay me back in children. Or they hung up their bodies in their own museums and other book titles pulled from a drum solo. Run here, hero. Lie at the hiding place. All the bullets in ten precincts, nowhere to go. There's no heaven nor any other good idea in the sky. Politics means that people did it and people do it.

Understand that when in San Francisco and other places that was never really there. I bet this ocean thinks it's an ocean, but it's not. It's just 16 Mission Street. All know who's king. King of thin things. You know, like America, I'm proud to deserve to die. I'm going to eat my dinner extra slow tonight in this police state candy dispenser you all call a neighborhood. No set of manners goes unpunished, never mind a murderer's insomnia or the tea kettle preparing everyone for police sirens.

That was Tongo Eisen-Martin, former San Francisco poet laureate. That was an excerpt of a larger work. What's the larger poem called, Tongo? The Course of Meal. The Course of Meal, yeah.

We are going to end up talking about all kinds of communities here, in part because this is Poetry Month this April, and also all three of the poets that we have here have received some support to bring poetry into their communities.

If you want to get in on this conversation with Joseph Rios, Tess Taylor, and Tongo Eisen-Martin, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us a poem that's maybe roused you to action in your community. Maybe like the one Tongo just read. You can give us a call. 866-733-6786.

You can email your thoughts, your poems to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media too, Blue Sky, Instagram, or KQED Forum, of course. Great use of the Discord as well. So when we get back from the break, hopefully we'll have some of you and your poems, and we're going to talk some more about community engagement and poetry. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break.

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Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. Gachos Rios, Fresno Poet Laureate. Tess Taylor, El Cerrito Poet Laureate. And Tongo Eisen Martin, former San Francisco Poet Laureate. Let's talk a little bit about what you all are doing with this community work. Tess, you got some grant money to put arts programs back into the schools you attended as a child, right? So what are you doing? Like, what's it like?

Well, it turns out that my county, Contra Costa County, has had some of the least arts funding per capita in the state of California, which is interesting because my school district that I am serving has the greatest diversity in the state of California. And I just really want to talk about the fact that arts pathways are pathways and that people who with longitudinal engagement with the arts have really, really good outcomes in lots of ways. Yeah.

And arts programming is really important for, you know, imaginative life. It's not just about STEM. It's about empathy. It's about dreaming. It's about pleasure. It's about sound. And so I have gotten six teaching artists together and we've reached 15 classes, 512 students worldwide.

with various scales of poetry programming from mentoring the literary magazine and the African American Poetry Club at the high school to like being in the aftercare programs to just being in classrooms. And we go in and we do, we usually read one poem, talk about its pleasures, talk about its delight, notice the words that make us happy. And then...

And then usually I have very colorful notebooks. It sounds like it should be more painful. No, it's really fun. Erasable gel pens. I have to say that was like the best innovation, the erasable gel pens. Colored notebooks, erasable gel pens, time to write. And I have had poems about pickles, dinosaurs, volcanoes, tacos. And it's just been...

Pretty phenomenal and so joyful. Yeah. We actually, we have a couple of your students' poems, I think. Maybe let's hear Kai's. Yeah. Hello, my name is Kai, and I am reading my poem, A Place I Don't Belong. My mind in peaceful slumber, in a vast world of dreams, cold biting my senses, but the sun against my skin leaves it burning hot. Laid face up, coughing up blood,

That was Kai reading their poem.

Tongo, you also have done some work in schools. In particular, I remember you were part of occupation of a school in Oakland that was slated for closed down. What did you learn from the students there?

Well, you know, where to begin? I would begin kind of with just the change in imagination and energy when the institution completely flows from a collective self-determination or, you know, a kind of a liberated state.

territory in which the entire operation is really being in a sense improvised from you know from what what is an exercise in human rightness especially crucial I think almost to kind of to take our solutions or and pan out

to look at the complete, you know, like the super structural reality of our work as we see the smaller or the more, in a way, the more local our efforts, the easier we are to eventually, you know, to be outflanked and even dissolved. That's what I learned. Yeah. And did you feel like...

the kids were in on this theoretical frame or do you feel like they were more feeling the liberation that, uh, that...

the occupation and the ways that you're trying to teach them the space that that was opening up? Oh, no, they were absolute co-creators of that reality. You know, I mean, the whole neighborhood understood what we were doing, that we were, you know, fighting this wave of school closures meant to further destabilize black and brown communities.

And that our primary task was this political or social stabilization. And so, you know, the classroom was the city. And, you know, we even had students, you know, coming to the school.

to the school board meetings with these beautiful statements. So they were fully conscious of what was taking place. And kids are. It's just they don't have the opportunity to participate in the games of power. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Actually, this is kind of the jumping off point of your project, right? Which is to put together a multi-generational poetry workshop in San Francisco, yeah? Yeah, yeah. So the idea is that, you know, the kind of consciousness that is conducive to our repression is one kind of like super saturated with

individualism and however noble all of the, you know, all of the protagonists that have participated in the nonprofit industrial complex, uh, insidiously what always comes along for the ride is this, uh,

individualism that is especially reinforced by the idea of you know, quote-unquote population, you know in nonprofit speak so, you know the the population of youth or a population of the ex-convicts population of You know differently abled people on it on and on and on it gives a false

whole w-h-o-l-e it gives the false it gives these these these false holes uh uh that that we believe we are a part of and we we know that um the the bigger um you know the bigger vehicles that we that that we believe we are riding and determine uh really determine our our nature and so um

in an attempt to, uh, to break out of that, we offer, um, or we're going to offer this intergenerational, uh, uh, poetry workshop so that people can get a sense that you are a part of, uh, people and further, you know, through this, you know, kind of like collective flex of vulnerability, um,

reanimate each other to ourselves is, we know we often reduce even the ones we love the most, we reduce to kind of function and projection. So yeah, this is our little piece of cultural work that will hopefully lend itself to a broader struggle.

Joseph, let's talk about what you're doing in Fresno so people can hear about that. It's working on a book, an anthology of Fresno writers, contemporary Fresno writers. And in thinking about, I mean, just coming off of what Tongo said about the multi-generational...

sort of lineage and sort of creating a collective community around poetry. An anthology, I feel like, is capable of doing that. And some of the first anthologies of Fresno literature that I encountered in the library were like Peace Work or This Much Earth really transformed my brain, you know, opened me up.

in this little quiet moments in the library or when I folded it up and carried it in my back pocket on the bus.

transformed you know little Joe's brain you know made me feel bigger you know I stood up a little straighter because I I had a connection to a culture a literature that was based in Fresno and came from where I came from you're part of a people part of a people yeah you know and like Tongo was saying you know that's it's very much I think poetry has that unique capability of

of sort of transforming people, which is why I think it's a target for banning and for being legislated against because it has that power to sort of bring people together around a lot of the same experiences and around a lot of the same, around language, around in history. And so I think that this, I'm hoping that this book does that. It's been about 20 years since there's been a Fresno Poetry Anthology book

And the hope is that after we've published the book to have a sort of teaching guide for K-6 and for high school and college so that this is kind of like an all-inclusive sort of unit to teach Fresno poetry. Yeah.

You know, one listener on Blue Sky writes, I knew about the Armenians in Fresno and the Hmong in Fresno, but I discovered that a friend descended from the Volga Germans in Fresno. A local butcher shop still makes their typical sausage. Yeah.

You know, one of my questions about Fresno poetry, as you put it, given that there is this, you know, variegation in the community there and this, you know, incredible set of cultures that are kind of meeting in this place. What do you think binds it together? Like, is there a thing that binds together Fresno poetry, you think? I think there's like a people often talk about like this grittiness, you know, and it's

And, you know, we were talking before the show that you've been out there. So you've seen some of this like mix of industry, like big, you know, steel plants and also steel.

wide expansive farms and it's a city that's always fighting with its identity. And so because there's always these immigrant communities that come in mass and really change and move the identity of the place in such beautiful ways, like you mentioned the Hmong, Serbians, Salvadorans, Mexicans like my family during the Mexican Revolution,

It just has a way of sort of refreshing itself through these mass sort of migrations of peoples looking for oftentimes refuge. And because there's access to work through these many different industries where language is not necessarily a barrier to success. Yeah.

You know, Tess, I was thinking a lot. I feel like El Cerrito is changing a lot, actually. It has changed a lot over the last couple of decades. Listener writes, connecting you two. The first poet to read is from El Cerrito, the town of my infancy. The next is from Fresno, a little ways up Highway 99 where I laid my parents to rest. This program hits. Thanks, listener on Blue Sky. Tess,

Talk to me about how you think the students that you're working with and how you are sort of processing the kind of change that has happened in El Cerrito. Well, I mean, I just want to stress that it's a global point of arrival. You know, it was settled by people arriving after the Ohlone and the Spanish and the people of the Dianza expedition. There is a huge wave of people coming white and black out of the south to work in the

And so it has this kind of like working class background. There were Japanese flower growers who were interns. So it was like a sort of a mixing pot and a ground zero for removing people in the 40s. And now it's still this place of like destination from everywhere. There's 49 languages in the schools. And...

You know, we did food poems and it was like the list of foods that were honored in the food poems were so amazing. I was completely hungry. There was like momos and yogurt soup and ramen and like this elaborate, elaborate description of curry. So I think...

is certainly in the process of a kind of gentrification and yet the schools, the public schools themselves are just like full of kids that are learning about each other's countries and worlds and stories and backgrounds and

And that's one of the reasons I think poetry is really important, because poetry is a way to listen to people's breath, rhythm, stories, languages across borders. One of the most frequent questions I would get while I was teaching poetry in the schools is like, is it OK if I put in a word in a different language? And the answer was always yes.

But then when I was typing up the anthology, you know, there were many poems that were sort of partially in Spanish. But there were some that were in alphabets that I wasn't really very easily able to transcribe. So that was like a... Anyway, the anthology is going to be presented at this Youth Poetry Festival, which is the first in El Cerrito. There's going to be a really cool day of activities, May 3rd. And these kids will come and get 512 poems.

poems which they have written which allow them to like hear and see um so anyway I think that doesn't quite say how it it feels like it hasn't changed as much as it stayed the same something about that town it's been the most diverse school district since the 1980s so to me that's like the joy of um

using poetry as a way of affirming pluralistic democracy. It's interesting, you know, you think about kids asking if they can put a word from another language into a poem. I find it sort of horrifying, but then I'm like, I guess they also ask if they can go to the bathroom. Like schools do weird things to kids, right? That things that are as the most natural things in the world become things you have to ask a teacher if you can do, um,

But I mean, I do think it's a really interesting thing of like, is there a place to play with language? There's certainly instruction about producing a kind of standardized language, which we are supposed to be acclimated to. And then we're supposed to think in these five paragraph essays and the first point should be the most important and then the second and third should back them up and then we should sum it up again.

But the truth is there's one of the most joyful moments in the class was we were making up a poem about animals. And it was definitely discovered by the fourth grade that the word massive is universally cooler than the word big. And everybody knew it. And the fact that they could just think about their pleasure in making sounds and their pleasure in joining sounds was,

Not using punctuation if they don't want to, mixing languages, speaking and writing in a way that felt delicious and joyful and authentic to them. You know, and then being able to listen to each other do that. Yeah. Joseph, you're also working on a curriculum as part of your grant project too, right? You were mentioning that. Is it a poetry reading kind of curriculum, poetry writing curriculum? Like, how are you thinking about it?

I think I'm going to sort of leave that up to the educators who we're going to involve, you know, like who figure out how they can best utilize the future anthology. And but yeah, no, I really I just want to go back to that, you know, writing in another language, you know, like we gosh, it's such a powerful language.

sort of powerful action to be able to have that freedom, you know, and to sort of validate your home language, validate your, because oftentimes people think and love it in this other language other than the one that they use in the classroom. And so to be able to bring that to four and like bring that onto a page is such a transformative thing. Whether they decide to be poets for the rest of their lives or not, it's such a powerful, powerful thing, you know. Yeah.

We're talking about poetry in the community. We're joined by Joseph Rios, Fresno Poet Laureate. We've also got Tess Taylor, El Cerrito Poet Laureate, and Tongo Eisen-Martin, the former San Francisco Poet Laureate. If you want to share a poem about a place that you love, you can send it to us, forum at kqed.org. You can give us a call, 866-733-8666.

6786. If you come in, one of our poets out there, Martina, says she wrote this poem about Oakland the other night. This is an excerpt. It's after the Gary Snyder poem about things to do in San Francisco.

Bike to the Richmond Bridge. Ride bikes down Park. Route up Chanterelles and Springtime Amanitas in mossy creviced hills. Get a few jobs. Keep the last one. Friends leave for New York, Boston, Berlin, Marin, Berkeley. Hike up Tam. Toast with good whiskey. Remember 1991. Live in the flat.

Jasmine heady chain links each spring up and down the East Avenues. Walk Sausal Creek's edge up to the Redwoods. Through the tunnel under 13 to Palo Seco. Watch the palms on 9th Bend. Keep refusing to leave.

Another listener writes, we need empathy now more than ever. Empathy is seen as a weakness by many in power these days. And it seems like some of what you're spreading is empathy, perhaps, with the poet here. I'm Alexis Magical. Stay tuned for more right after the break. At Sierra, discover great deals on top brand workout gear, like high quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery. 40,000 steps, baby.

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Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about poetry and place and community and role and action in the world. Joined by Tongo Eisen-Martin, former San Francisco Poet Laureate. Tess Taylor, El Cerrito Poet Laureate. Joseph Rios, Fresno Poet Laureate. Taking your poems, also taking your comments about how poetry has changed the way you see the world and community around you.

You know, Tongo, I want to talk a little bit about poet laureateship. Do you have... What are your feelings about it? I mean, you're now out of the role, so, you know, you can speak freely. I'm now out of the game. Well, you know, I think, you know, a poet laureateship, you know, however... Almost, you know, however great the potential...

There is for having a position that provides organization for poetry that is an entry point for people in other organizations that don't usually engage poetry to step through the door. The thing is not outside of the...

the contradictions of late stage imperialism. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. What is it? And so, you know, it almost, it kind of like remains to be seen or we're in a very interesting moment where this really could be

the last gasps of an epoch. What comes next? We know it won't be the regularly scheduled neoliberalism that I think the position would be kind of made to serve to convince folks again that you can have an individual adventure.

And everything will be all right. But, you know, to be less, to conclude in a less grumpy fashion. Tongo.

I think there's still, you know, and as this, you know, the laureateness seems to spread like wildfire. If laureates understand what side of social contradiction they belong to, what their historical task is to...

stabilize our people's stabilized imaginations, protect imaginations, especially imaginations that are constructing liberatory projects, then we won't be judged harshly a few generations from now.

But now, if all you want is a key to the city locker, then you're going to be in for a world of irony. Joseph, I wonder if this plays differently in Fresno, in part because I feel like San Francisco is...

has a sense of itself as like, "We're a poetic town. You know, we got all the poets." You know? And I wonder if maybe the task of poet laureate in a Fresno is a little bit different because it's like, while there's many, many poets, maybe there's less of a kind of like self-consciousness about the tradition?

Yeah, there's, I feel like people outside of Fresno know about our poets more than I think the people in Fresno know about our poets. So there is like a little bit of a sort of education of the, you know, population outside that, you know, cares more about Fresno State football rather than like, you know, the, you know, the poets that are teaching at Fresno State itself. But, but no, I think there's, yeah.

The task is tall in that sense. But I think it's, the town is coming around. You know, we've had two U.S. poet laureates in my lifetime in Phil Levine and Juan Felipe Herrero. We've had the current California poet laureate is from Fresno, Lee Herrick. And so I think, you know, I was saying before the show that like,

I believe this wholeheartedly and I would bet money is that, and I say this all the time, is that like in, in every MFA program across the country, they're teaching a Fresno poet right now. And whether that's my Durvang, whether that's Juan Felipe, whether that's Phil Levine or Larry Levis or whatever. But I think that,

Yeah, I think the poet laureateship, you know, we've had, I believe, nine now. Don't quote me on that. And I think each time it just becomes sort of a bigger, sort of more visible role in the town. And I think people are starting to sort of recognize that there's a lot of poets in this place. Yeah.

Listener Jerry shares a poem. I like this one, too. The year is over. How weird it ends without a sound. Tess, you have a poem that was collectively written by some students. Is that right? Yeah. We based this poem on a really fabulous poem by a San Francisco poet, Janine Lentine. She's a Zen poet.

Monk. And she wrote this poem called Interview with a Pear Tree. And there's two voices, the pear tree and the human, and they're in sort of baffled conversation with each other.

And I thought this is a great form because anybody can interview anything, but also it's a reminder that poetry exists to transcend boundaries and to let us be in dialogue with forces and things, human and non-human, present past, ways that we wouldn't normally communicate. So I presented this idea and this poem to some fourth graders who, by the way, are great interviewers. Alexis, if you ever want great zany interview questions. They got it down.

What's your favorite superpower? So they came up with this one. And it had to do with the fact that a fellow teacher was wearing an obsidian necklace. So this poem is called Interview Questions for a Polished Piece of Obsidian. Who were your neighbors when you lived in a volcano? How did you get so smooth? Did you ever think about becoming a diamond? How much are you worth?

What type of volcano did you live in? Shield, strato, etc. And when you lived in the volcano, did you dream about forming an island? Are you happy to be a necklace? What did it feel like coming to the surface? What did it feel like being lava? What was your earliest memory? How long did it take you to harden?

Dang, kids. Dang. So I just want to shout out to Cairo, Charlie, Dakari, Emeline, Isaac, Maya, Thomas, Gabriel. The Utes. The Utes are here. That is... That's a nice little poem. Um...

We are talking about poetry in community. We're talking about some projects that our Poets Laureate past and present are working on. We've got Tongo Eisen-Martin with us, former San Francisco Poet Laureate, and Tess Taylor El Cerrito, Poet Laureate, and Joseph Rios, Fresno Poet Laureate.

laureate take in your calls and your poems poem just came in about Elsa Bronte and I feel like Elsa Bronte does not have enough poems written about it so let's Cheryl writes newly arrived in the land of the leftovers on Halloween a horse dressed like a unicorn whoo dressed like a unicorn proudly carries his princess trick-or-treating I was home Cheryl thanks for sharing that um

And Lisa writes in to say, I loved hearing Tess Taylor's poem about El Cerrito. She's part of what makes El Cerrito a great place to be. Much smaller than San Francisco or Fresno, but our four square mile city combines the best of what makes the Bay Area great with small town living. After hearing her poem, I love my city even more. And you're working with some other poets too in El Cerrito, right? Who are going to the schools? Totally. Former poet laureate Moshian Nguyen, amazing youth educator Gabriel Cortez. I think I'm going to get all the names wrong if I just kind of mumble them out.

Norma Smith, MK Chavez, Chris Martin, Clara Sparrow. I did it. Here we go. Jodi in Fresno. Welcome. Hi, thank you. What do you have for us, Jodi?

So this is a poem I wrote about my dad. He's a farmer. He works in Fresno. Some of the words are in Punjabi. So the poem is called "When My Dad Comes Home From Work." When my dad goes to work, he walks around in the dirt all day. No matter the weather, he's up spraying sulfur on the grapes. In the summer, he gets up earlier for fear he'll pass out in the tractor from heat exhaustion or dehydration.

When my dad comes home from work, his eyes dilate to readjust to his dwelling. A cool dark air where everyone is still sleeping. Wooden shutters lock out the morning sunlight and noon heat. We're from Fresno, UC, a place hot enough to turn some grapes into soggy. When my dad comes home from work, a halo of dirt covers his bog.

and his black dardy is white from all the dust. He reeks of burnt matchsticks and rotten eggs, the smell of sulfur and pesticides in their natural state, which even a long shower won't get rid of. All of these have now become a part of his blood, seeping into his pores, causing complications that he and I would like to ignore. I just read three stanzas. It's much longer than that. Jodi, where did you discover poetry?

I actually took a class at Fresno City College, and this is where I wrote that poem. With who? Who did you take the class with? I don't remember. It was a long time ago. Yeah.

So many great poets at City College. There's also, beyond Fresno State, there's loads of published poets that teach at City College. It's a really great place to learn. Jody, I super appreciate that. Joseph, do you want to respond to that poem at all? Yeah, no, I mean, there's a lot of the stuff I was talking about as far as, you know, communities coming and, you know, from all over the world to farm and sort of...

but also this very like dark side of that, which is, you know, exposure to pesticides. Uh, I really, you know, on the side, no love that line of the halo of dirt, uh, over the father's head. And, uh,

I mean, that dad could be a Hmong farmer, a Mexican farmer, a Oaxacan farmer. Any time since the early 20th century, so many immigrant communities have come and built a life the hard way that way. Go ahead, Jess. I just wanted to say something about, I think I had this experience coming to writing, and I know Joseph probably did too, because you were talking about it, writing around with these poems in your back pocket. Yeah.

that there can be this moment when you realize that poems can be made

the place the places near you like the street names the quality of light the storefront the language that you speak and that literally you see that you can begin to gather the things around you and put them down on paper and begin to hear their rhythm and and make a poem and Suddenly this thing that seems sometimes like super far away like, you know Keats writes about bluebells I've never seen a bluebell

Or I didn't until I finally got to England. But the thing is, this is so empowering. And then it's this art form where you don't need an editor or a studio or like all this. You just have a pen and paper and the details around you. And suddenly you have a bit more...

power over your story and your life. And it's just amazing to have that. It felt, for me, I remember it just literally felt like the sun coming up over the hills. We have one other student poem also, I think kind of directly ties in, just built from the bits of high school life here. Let's hear from Daniel. Hi, I'm Daniel Gansmiller, and this is my poem, Graduation.

The stage rises up, staring you down. Your name rings. Legs shakily respond. You take a step. The first day. Your best outfit, lost in the labyrinth hallways. Step. Laughs with your new friends in bio. Step. Screaming at football games. The night air, electric. Step. Study guide panic. You can't fail this test. Step. Friend group drives. Shouting lyrics on the radio. Step.

Light swirl. Everyone in suits and dresses dancing. Step. Your entire being packaged up into an essay, praying the colleges like your sales pitch. Step. You're at the stage. It's already over? Did it all really happen? You grab the flimsy paper that means education. You stare out at the people you love, tolerate, hate. You walk to the end of the stage. There is no staircase. You have to jump.

It was Daniel from El Cerrito. You know, going through some high school experiences that I think a lot of people might identify with. I also just loved in that reading hearing some of the little intakes of breath, too. You know, just remembering the courage it takes to let it rip. So coaching a little bit students coming in with their poems to get ready to read them.

And people coming in, sort of shuffling in with their backpack, kind of shoulders hunched down and sitting there and sort of practicing saying the words and breathing into them and watching people feel like their own relationship with language and breath is

brought them some power and dignity, and watching people say their words more powerfully with more conviction, record them on the radio, and go out of the room a couple inches taller. That was one of my great experiences. Yeah.

You know, as we come into the close here, Tongo, I'm going to start with you on this one. I just wanted to give each of you a chance to shout out a single other poet from your city. It doesn't have to be your favorite, but maybe somebody you read, you know, yesterday or this morning. One other poet from your city that you hope you want other people to know about.

Man, just one? Just one. Just one. Just one? I know you poets. You just shout out the whole bench, you know? Right, right, right, right. Well, you know, everybody, we are all, we should all jump for joy that the next poet lawyer, the current poet lawyer of San Francisco is Jenny Lim. She is a most...

I don't even know. Like an unquantifiable spirit, heart, and intellect that have all, like, these forces have all made their way into one dynamic imagination. Yeah.

uh everyone look look forward to the next three years you have uh you have a great champion that's great uh jenny lim uh tess so i am teaching alongside former poet laureate ma xin wen and the thing that's amazing about ma first of all i love her poems love them love them but the other thing is

When we get faced with something super frustrating, Ma and I just get on the phone and laugh. She's just a kind spirit, and she has helped me respond to adversity with a ton of laughter. And I just adore her. Jo? Yeah.

- This is a very hard question, but I am tempted to give you my whole starting lineup. - Yeah, it's not fair. - But just a shout out to Sara Borjas, who's someone who I look up to a lot and happen to be related to, and also teaches here in the Bay Area, and just an incredible poet. - Sara Borjas. - Sara Borjas. - Yeah.

We've been talking about poetry in the community, poetry and place. We have been joined by Joseph Rios, Fresno Port Laureate. Thank you so much for joining us, Joe.

How's it going, man? I'm so happy to be here. Been joined by Tess Taylor, El Cerrito Poet Laureate. Thanks for joining us, Tess. Thank you so much. And Tongo Eisenmarten, always good to hear your voice. Former San Francisco Poet Laureate. Thanks for joining us, Tongo. Hey, always honored to participate in such a beautifully crafted program. Much love. Thank you so much. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another beautifully crafted hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

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